Iranian Navy Threatens US Navy in Gulf

In what appears a test of provocation, US military officials reported Monday on a significant action over the weekend in which five vessels of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps harrassed US Navy ships with hostile actions and transmitted threats over radio channels.

In one radio transmission, the Iranians told the U.S. Navy: "I am coming at you. You will explode in a couple of minutes," the U.S. military officials told CNN.

When the U.S. ships heard that radio transmission, they manned their gun positions and officers were "in the process" of giving the order to fire when the Iranians abruptly turned away, the U.S. officials said.

The events took place at the Strait of Hormuz, a shipping choke-point that Iran has repeatedly threatened to block by sinking tankers in retaliation for any attack on Iran. See also a BBC report on the incident, which includes a useful map for those unfamiliar with the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

We at ThreatsWatch have dismissed the Iranian threat to choke oil shipments by blocking the Strait as well as its stated aims to stop its own exports. The Iranian 'Oil Weapon' remains not the act of cutting off their own economic life blood, but rather the results that such threats have on oil prices to their windfall benefit.

As with other Iranian threats and actions that have caused the world oil markets to nervously drive up the price of crude, this weekend's action also comes as oil prices fell from a November 2007 average of $92.67 to just $88.21 for December. [Source: OILNERGY: posted oil price (WTI)]

The Iranian Oil Weapon is not the act of blocking the Strait of Hormuz nor the removal of Iranian oil from world markets, which is economic suicide for an immensely struggling Iranian economy. The Iranian Oil Weapon is the threat of this, manifest in actions such as the naval harassment this weekend, and the clear economic advantage the resulting tensions provide via increased market price for exported crude oil and natural gas.

Nothing substantial in the Times Online article to lead to this thinking.

Bunk. But the more this is believed, the more the Iranian regime benefits from increased windfall via spiked oil prices....the only income source keeping Iran afloat while it invests huge sums in its nuclear endeavors rather than in its people or other potentially productive and self-sustaining segments of economic development.